Zümbül

Cassian Veyr knows his father only as the village's quiet, steady chief not as the man once feared across all kingdoms as the Shadow Sovereign. In secret, Cassian trains with Azhur, a mysterious half-lion being he trusts more than almost anyone alive. His father has forbidden him from going anywhere near Azhur. Cassian doesn't listen. When the yearly Hunter Selection begins, Cassian and his closest friends, Zayd and Aurelia, finally get their chance to prove themselves. But deep in the northern woods, something far worse than a test is waiting: a monstrous boar, a stranger who leaves the bodies of other candidates behind like trophies and, rising on the horizon, the first smoke of a village on fire. In a single day, Cassian loses everything. His friends are taken. His teacher becomes the deepest betrayal of his life. And his father dies in his arms, cut down by eyes that glow a cold, sickly green someone come to collect on a past his father thought he'd buried for good. Three months later, Cassian is alone in the western woods starved, changed, his eyes barely those of the boy he used to be. When two strangers finally find him, he carries only one thing with him now, colder and clearer than any grief: He will find Azhur, Green eye and every rebel. And he will end them whatever it costs.